I’ve seen…

I’m pretty sure if I Googled what I just ate, I would find a scarier calorie count than I’m truly prepared for. On this, the third (or fourth…time and space are mysteries whose comprehension requires more energy than I am prepared to give) day of our student trip to San Francisco and Thereabouts, we’ve managed to shuffle our gaggle of kids around Alcatraz and Fisherman’s Wharf with the Golden Gate Bridge to come.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised how few behavioral issues we’ve had to remedy this trip. If in the course of a school year the biggest issue I had to deal with was a runaway sense of negativity, I would be able to spend much more time actually teaching my content area than I currently do. If wishes were horses, right?

One thing that I’ve been trying to push my budding writers to do on this trip is to spend more time writing down careful observations of people they encounter or see on the trip in lieu of the standard tell-me-about-your-day style of journaling. Right now, here at the Wharf, nothing would make me happier than spying a few of my students staring into a crowd of people only to latch on to one or two passers-by and record every salient fact and observable quality.

In a sense, I’m trying to quietly pass on one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever received. Observe, record, interpret, repeat. While writing this post, I’ve spent nearly half an hour watching people walk up and down the Wharf carrying ice cream cones, coffee cups, small children, and plenty of extra baggage. I’ve seen an old man who can’t walk five steps without having a serious internal battle about whether or not he should ogle the seemingly endless supply of teenage girls. I’ve watched a whole slew of small clone families stuff any number of spawn into a smaller number (confusing, I know) of luxury strollers and baby holsters. I’ve watched at least two people try to eat chowder out of bread bowls while walking (with, sad as it is to say, no comically scalding results). I’ve watched an old man smoke a Peterson pipe, a young woman drop her phone three times, and a twenty-something-year-old man pour about a cup of cocoa powder into three different cups of coffee (from different coffee stands, no less).

In a word, I’ve seen nearly everything this small stretch of boardwalk has to offer. I wonder how many other people are doing the exact same thing.

Personally, I don’t want to venture a guess.

-B